I have a very classy bagel slicer, lucite, well-designed, very pretty and
tactile. Bagels are rare here in Cookeville, TN., esp the kind you buy uncut
and unfrozen. I bring it to class and ask people to tell me what to do with
it. they don't know. [This is nearly a perfect thing to use in this
demonstration because it obviously 'exists,' can be passed around, etc., and
one can reasonably assume that it was made somewhere for a purpose. But, no
one can name the thing.] Until I tell what it is, no one knows how to behave
toward it.
We can take it to another level, I suppose, and say that it becomes,
symbolically, an 'unnamed thing,' and 'object of curiosity,' but that's getting
a little silly.
Donna Darden.